


Reflex

by swaps55



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 19:25:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1238128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swaps55/pseuds/swaps55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been over two years, but time hasn’t changed as much as he thought it would.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflex

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silvermittt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvermittt/gifts).



> Written for a prompt given to me by Silvermittt on tumblr!

Kaidan grips the overhead handle inside the Kodiak tighter as the shuttle enters atmosphere. Shepard eyes him, posture languid, helmet cradled in one arm, looking for all the world like he’s preparing for a well-armored sojourn on the beach instead of wading into a hot zone that asari commandos couldn’t handle.

“Got your sea legs back?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Kaidan replies, not sure if he’s annoyed with himself at being so on edge or at Shepard for noticing. Mars is certainly on his mind, but not…that. Combat doesn’t worry him. The possibility of finding another mech that wants to scramble his brains doesn’t bother him either, though maybe it should. 

No, he’s trying to figure out how they’ve somehow wound up side by side in spite of everything that’s happened. Everything's gone so _wrong_ since the moment they laid eyes on one another back on Earth that for something to finally go right seems too good to be true.  There's always too much suspicion, too much _I used to_ , and not enough faith in the things he knows. Not enough of that sly half-smirk Shepard reserves for the people he trusts – the one even Cerberus couldn’t alter. 

Kaidan hadn’t realized how much he's missed that smirk.

And now that Kaidan’s back on the _Normandy,_ witnessing all the little things that make him _Shepard_ , the doubts are gone. His habit of reading debriefs in the mess instead of his quarters. His inexplicable love for coffee that tastes like motor oil. The strange way he titles his mission reports (first initials of each member of his team along with the cluster, system and planet it took place on). His insistence that barbecue sauce goes on _everything_. Cerberus didn’t program that.

Kaidan can’t help but wonder sometimes if he’d just taken a moment on Horizon to _look_ , to _see_ , maybe things would have gone differently.

As if Shepard intuits his train of thought he offers a half smile. Not the smirk. This is something…new. Sure but unsure, all at the same time. Something Kaidan hasn’t seen before. 

The shuttle bucks under his feet as they encounter more wind shear. This time he feels Shepard’s steadying hand against his back. Brief. Maybe even accidental – a reflex, perhaps. But when Kaidan meets his gaze, he’s not so sure.

~

Lesuss is silent. Wrong. No light greets them from the landing pad. The monastery forms a dark shadow against a slowly darkening sky. Kaidan doesn’t know anything about Ardat-Yakshi, but Shepard and Garrus exchange uneasy glances, and Kaidan can see the distaste wash across Shepard’s face even through his faceplate. Liara hasn’t said a word since they landed.

“Do you think she knows?” Garrus murmurs, and at first Kaidan thinks he means Liara. 

Shepard nods towards a second shuttle on the pad, no designation on the hull, still warm. “I think she’s already here.”

Shepard does not offer Kaidan an explanation, and now is not the time to ask. It’s a stinging reminder of the recent history they don’t share. Those moments have come more often than he’d like, but less than he feared.

Still, it hurts a little more than he cares to admit when Shepard turns to Garrus for a tactical assessment, even more when Garrus knows what he wants without having to ask.

_Someone had to step up when you walked away._

Kaidan knows why he turned his back on Horizon, but he can’t help the guilt. Not for questioning Shepard’s motives or doubting his commanding officer had just risen from the grave and allied himself with an enemy. That wasn’t a bad judgment call, it was goddamned _rational_.

No, the guilt comes from resentment. Realizing the only thing worse than losing Shepard was getting him back – being the last to know when you wanted to be the first.

~

They find their way from the dark and dead living quarters into the communal areas that still have power. The monastery is even worse in the light than it is in the dark. It looks wrong, feels _wrong._ Even the gravity wells don’t respond like they should. The dark energy Kaidan summons to himself is slithering and cold, almost sluggish, in a way he can’t explain. One glance at Liara tells him she feels it, too.

Shepard walks a few paces ahead, body taut, barrel of his shotgun shifting towards every sound, no matter how slight. On the rare occasions he speaks his voice betrays nothing, but Kaidan doesn’t need it to. It’s been over two years, but time hasn’t changed as much as he thought it would. Even under his hardsuit he can still read the tension in Shepard’s spine, the stiffness across his shoulders, uneasy staccato in his step. 

They pass the body of yet another commando, her face in death frozen by fear, fingers rigid and bloody from clawing at whoever – _whatever_ – killed her. Kaidan doesn’t look too closely at the grey, mutilated tissue caught underneath her fingernails.

Liara stoops beside the body, gazing up at Shepard with wide, horrified eyes. The hole in the corpse’s chest is gruesome, a pulpy, congealed mass of purple blood and soft tissues hanging off the smashed slivers of bone-white ribs. Just like the others.

“What could have done this?” she asks, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice.

_An abomination,_ the Justicar had said. _Today the asari will learn there are fates far worse than death._

~

They find reaper forces in the courtyard. Kaidan calls to the area’s gravity well, feels it bend and writhe to his will. But it still feels wrong.

Despite the cold feeling twisting in his gut, things go smoothly at first. The familiar cadence of combat with Shepard is something you don’t easily forget. He is predictable only in his unpredictability, constantly shifting tectonic plates that are never content except in perpetual motion. Kaidan saw flashes of it on Mars, but now he feels the familiar cant of dark energy that is so indefinably Shepard, and finds himself falling right back in tune with it as if the last two and a half years are pencil strokes that have been painstakingly erased.

The mutated eezo nodes under his skin sing as Liara alters the room’s density and sinks it into a focal point, trapping a pair of husks inside the newly formed event horizon of a singularity. Garrus calls out marauders from a balcony perch, and before Kaidan can react Shepard becomes a blur of seething blue fire in his rush to meet them.

That’s when they hear the first scream.

She – _it_ – materializes from nowhere, blood-curdling wail stopping Kaidan in his tracks. The sound pierces him like a thousand needles sinking right to his marrow. For a moment he loses his control of the gravity well, as if his entire body has been plunged into dark, icy water. He hears Liara’s cry of dismay, sees her pointing in his periphery to the balcony opposite Garrus.

A mutated asari with black, dead eyes, mottled grey skin studded with blue lights and artificial sinews, glides down into the courtyard, entire body flickering like a ghost. A ghastly malaise of dark energy propels her in a graceful stutter-step, the mechanism of which Kaidan can’t begin to fathom.

But it doesn’t matter how she’s doing it. What matters is how quickly, how _effortlessly,_ the space between her and Shepard evaporates, how swiftly she swipes at him with curved, knife-like claws that glimmer in the half-light of the courtyard.

Shepard rolls. It’s clumsy, awkward, a desperate dodge from someone who is never desperate. His barrier is gone, disrupted by the same shift in the room’s gravity that threw Kaidan out of balance. The chatter of his shotgun is silent, and with mounting horror Kaidan realizes that the gun is on the ground and out of his reach. 

It takes a moment to realize he is already running, pistol firing, shouting into his comm for Garrus.

The banshee lashes out once more and this time finds purchase, spearing right through the ablative of Shepard’s hardsuit and lifting him bodily off the ground. He scrabbles at her emaciated arms that grip with preternatural strength, legs kicking in mid-air.

“ _No!”_

Alchera. Horizon. Mars. It’s happening right before his eyes and he can’t stop it. Shepard’s going to die, _again_ , while Kaidan watches. 

His corona flares, amp hot and humming against the back of his neck as he pushes past the _wrongness_ still lingering in the reaperized asari’s wake. This time the gravity well responds, sharp and eager, and he pulls it greedily towards him until his entire body thrums with kinetic energy frantic for release.

Kaidan executes a mnemonic with cold, brutal precision. A crackling blue gale sluices down his arms with a howl and strikes the monster with bone-shattering force. She screams and lets Shepard go, the latent force of the biotic assault whipping him free from her talons. He lands hip first and skids, sparks kicking up where his hardsuit grates against concrete until he crashes headfirst into a planter trailing loose threads of green fern.

Garrus’ rifle cracks. The mutated asari screams as another current of dark energy rips into her distended belly – this one courtesy of Liara. The air around the banshee explodes as she expels a biotic nova that rattles Kaidan's teeth. He keeps his balance – barely – another gauntlet of blue lighting up his arm as he draws it back. He can feel blood trickle down his nose, hear the klaxon in his HUD warning him his amp is reaching critical overheat.

The second blow strikes home with force nearly equal to his first attack. The banshee howls. Kaidan is close enough now to feel a sudden heat radiate off her body. Her pallid skin glows a bright, painful red, the embedded reaper tech throwing off an acrid stench as it incinerates. The rest of her goes with it, monstrous shape remaining visible for just a moment before a breeze catches the resulting ash and scatters it across the courtyard, leaving behind only a shrill, resonating echo that takes too long to fade.

_Shepard_.

He’s still a heap on the ground, terrifyingly still. Kaidan yanks off his helmet and hits his knees at Shepard’s side, barking his name. A stray cannibal that comes up behind him erupts in a fountain of gore as Garrus scores a headshot, but Kaidan barely flinches. He feels for the seals of Shepard’s helmet and releases them with a soft snick.

“Come on, come on,” he mutters. “I am _not_ losing you again.”

He doesn’t realize until later that he spoke the words aloud.

Gently he slips the helmet off, careful not to torque Shepard’s neck and spine, shoving an armada of _what ifs_ into the back of his mind and forcefully slamming the door on them.  When Shepard gasps, Kaidan sags with relief.

“Oh, thank God.” 

“Fuck me,” Shepard manages, trying to prop himself up on his elbows. Kaidan forces him back down, hoping he doesn’t look as pale and shaken as he feels, and activates his omnitool for a medical scan.

“Do yourself a favor and don’t move, ok?”

“What the hell _was_ that?”

“A fate worse than death,” Liara murmurs, coming up to them. Her sky blue skin is pale, eyes locked on the balcony where the banshee had come from. “Samara was right.”

Shepard grimaces. Kaidan pushes down on his shoulder, anticipating his move to get up and heading it off at the pass. He acquiesces, at least for the moment.

“We’re putting a stop to it, Liara. Got that?”

She nods, expression hardening when she sees a stray husk shambling near the far entrance to the Great Hall. “Yes,” she replies, moving to intercept it. “I do.”

Kaidan watches her go. When he turns back to Shepard he finds himself pinned by his sharp, blue eyes. 

“My ribs are intact, Kaidan. Pretty sure I’d know if she’d fisted my aorta.”

“I’m not worried about that.” He opens his mouth to say more, but the words stick in his throat. _Do you have any idea how hard I just hit you?_ Kaidan’s implant has never spiked that high, channeled that much voltage at once.

The banshee hadn’t thrown him like that. Kaidan had.

A shudder sweeps through him.

“I’m ok,” Shepard insists, pushing against Kaidan’s hand until he’s sitting up, hand shooting to his hip with a grunt. “Mostly.” He exhales, eying the pile of smoldering ashes. “How the hell did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Kaidan says, and it’s the truth. Shepard’s gaze finds him again, and all Kaidan can think about is how close, how _close_ they just came to catastrophe. “She _had_ you. I just…reacted. I guess. Reflex.”

Shepard nods, and reaches a hand towards his face. Kaidan’s heart nearly stops, until he remembers the blood. Hastily he scrubs his nose.

“Hell of a reflex,” Shepard murmurs.

Garrus finally reaches them, rifle still ready in hand.  “What is it with you two? Even I know that silly phrase ‘sweep you off your feet’ is supposed to be an idiom. If you’re that desperate for a wingman I’m free most Tuesday nights.”

Shepard snorts, but his gaze lingers on Kaidan for a beat longer, the same subtle, unfamiliar smile on his face from the shuttle. Butterflies loose in Kaidan’s stomach.

Garrus holds out a talon and helps Shepard to his feet. “I really hope we’re not going to invite the dead banshee on board the _Normandy_ like we did Eva Core.”

Shepard’s eyes flick to the spot where the banshee stood as Kaidan rises unassisted. “I think we’ll pass this time.”

“Well, at least we know you have limits.” The turian hefts his rifle and signals to Liara before heading towards the exit for the Great Hall, where no doubt more of those…things are waiting. Kaidan begins to follow, until he feels the weight of Shepard's hand on his shoulder. 

“Thanks.”

Kaidan holds his breath and turns, responds with a small nod and hands him his helmet, praying Shepard doesn’t look too hard, see too much. His eyes fall on the puncture holes in Shepard’s armor, white gleam of medigel barely visible underneath. The sight of that banshee with her claws sunk into him, holding him helpless off the ground, isn’t going away any time soon. He thinks back to Mars, and part of him can’t help but wonder if maybe Shepard is haunted by something eerily similar.

“You'd have done the same,” he says, right before the pause gets too long. “I think our positions have been reversed a few times.”

There’s that smile again, sure and unsure at the same time. “Just like old times, isn’t it?”

But it’s not. There’s something else, now. Something new. Just like that smile. And Kaidan is beginning to wonder if they both know it.


End file.
